Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Welcome contemporary romance author, Clare Austin...

Selkie’s Song

by Clare Austin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

They call her Selkie. Muireann O'Malley often felt she was
born of the sea but refuses to let sentimentality stand in the way of her
crusade to protect the shore she has wandered since a small child. A patch of
West Clare, Ireland, and a derelict building are all that stand between the
cliffs she loves and the callous grip of progress.

Tynan Sloane should be content with success, but a dream
beckons. O'Fallon's Pub in historic downtown Boston is for sale and Tynan wants
to make it his. An unexpected inheritance of land in the west of Ireland could
provide the financing he needs. He doesn't expect his quick trip to sell the
land to rekindle youthful passion.

Fifteen years
ago, they had an adolescent crush. Now disparate ambition and a legend as old
as Ireland herself stand between them. Will love and myth collide to bring them
together or tear them apart?

EXCERPT

Someone pounded a glass on the bar and called for

silence. Others tapped spoons on their pint glasses until

the talking ceased and the room was quiet as a church

on Monday night.

It started so softly, Tynan thought he was once

again in a dream by the sea. The singer had her back to

him, head bowed. She wore a knitted cap, but dark hair

escaped its boundaries and streamed over her shoulders.

He knew by tradition her eyes would be closed.

Her sound was clear as a ringing bell, and he found

himself wondering if she had a face to match the beauty

of her vocal offering.

The fiddler joined her with the lightest touch of his

bow, and the resonance pulled gently at Tynan’s heart.

Her voice was evocative of other times and places.

He’d heard the song before, but not with this

gentleness…a mother’s hand on a wounded child, a

land and it’s people caressed and healed by lyric and

melody. It spoke of friends, of fish, and of the summer

sunsets.

Was she muse or prophet? Every cell in Tynan’s

body sang along with her, as though she reached out

and touched the most intimate threads of his soul. He

couldn’t swallow and could barely breathe.

“I stood by your Atlantic shore and sang a song for

Ireland,” she sang in tones meant to transcend the

physical and pierce the core of an Irishman’s spirit.

The strains ceased. A benediction of silence

hovered. Ty closed his eyes, picked up his glass, and let

the smooth whiskey glide over his tongue and down his

throat. The band picked up with a jig and the spell was

broken.

When he looked again, the singer was gone.

AUTHOR Bio and
Links:

A word about the author...

Clare Austin submitted her first manuscript to a publisher at the age of
eight years. She wishes she still had that rejection letter.

Many years and not a few stories later, with characters knocking at the
inside of her cranium and begging to be released, Clare’s romantic comedy, Butterfly,
was published. There followed a suspenseful sequel, Angel’s Share, and Hot
Flash, a women’s fiction/romance for mature women and the men who love them.

Clare lives in the beautiful Rocky Mountains and enjoys her horses,
playing her violin, and traveling to Ireland every summer.